A Princess of the Chameln by Cherry Wilder

saved.”
    He opened the tall wooden shutters onto the balcony and let in the fitful sunshine of an autumn day. Thornmoon, the month of sacrifice, was just beginning.
    â€œHas it occurred to you that this might have been the plan?” he asked. “Jalmar the Healer was determined to save the village. Musna rendered an unexpected service to the Daindru.”
    â€œJalmar Riaz hired the assassins? I cannot believe it!” said Aidris.
    Nazran sighed and looked out into the streets of the city. The maples around the distant Zor palace were turning blood red and gold.
    â€œLook there!” he said, his frown lifting.
    Aidris came to stand beside him at the window, and he moved the shutter so that she remained in shadow. He pointed into the street beyond the palace stockade, and there was a young man, a soldier in elaborate strip mail, mounted on a tall white stallion. He wore a shining helmet with a plume, and behind him rode a kedran, a battlemaid, with a banner showing a white tree. Their two horses were picking their way through drifts of red leaves and patches of mud.
    â€œAh, I can read those two,” said Nazran with a chuckle. “A knight questor and his esquire, come out of Athron. That banner is for the Foresters.”
    â€œBut what does the knight seek?” asked Aidris.
    There was something ridiculous about the young man, his fine trappings, his plume, his banner.
    â€œHe is looking for adventure,” said Nazran.
    She rode out at nightfall through the northern gate of the city with a troop of nine kedran. Esher Am Zor came with the kedran of his own bodyguard to bid her farewell. Two of the Torch Bearers, her father’s companions, were present: Gilyan and Wetzerik. She thought of the lights going out in the palace of the Firn; in all its hundred rooms, its galleries and corridors, only darkness and silence.
    She travelled to Ledler Fortress on its high hill and stayed almost to the year’s end with the quiet, dark widow woman, Micha Am Firn, her closest relative. Then, before the snow became too deep she rode westward with only two kedran, the officers Kira and Maith, to the distant manor of Thuven, near the border range, on the edge of the forest. Nazran and Maren were already there to welcome her. She remained at the manor house for more than two years, undisturbed.

Chapter Two
    I
    The manor house had been rebuilt out of an old water fortress. A shallow lake spread out before it, and behind rose a man-made hill, low and grey. It was a barrow for the dead; no one knew who had made it, but the bones that came up to the surface of the long mound were small, almost child-sized. Aidris once found a small dagger made of polished bone, golden with age, twisted into the roots of the grass.
    The house and the lake were enclosed in a ring of trees, poplar and birch; on the eastern side there was a windbreak of spruce and pine. Beyond these darker trees the plain swept away; the road east could be seen crossing the plain. She used to watch the traffic on the road, coming from distant Achamar and the towns that lay between. A smudge of dust became a solitary rider, a moving scrap of yellow among the wild flowers grew into a laden wagon with a bright hood. They came on, wagon and rider alike, and passed by on the road.
    Looking westward from the manor house she could see the plain come into the shadow of the forest. Here, where plain and forest met, the deer came out to graze, and she saw or imagined hunters stalking the deer. Oak mingled loosely with dark firs here on level ground; there were pleasant glades and woodland pools. Then the forest closed its ranks. Massed dark trees covered the world farther than eye could see and clothed the knotty slopes of the border mountains. The road ran on out of sight, cutting through the forest to the town of Vigrund. Beyond the town by several leagues the road crossed through a mountain pass into the land of Athron.
    Aidris learned to study alone